Elevated expressway

On the last day of April, the prime minister symbolically opened the work of the 26-kilometer expressway, as reported in the dailies next morning - the best news of May Day. Starting from the International airport, the expressway will meet the Dhaka-Chittagong highway at Kutubkhali. To ensure that construction work is completed on time, there are penalties for delay for both the parties: the contractor for delay in completing the expressway; and the government for delay in handing over the earmarked land for building the expressway. If the contractor delays the completion; they will pay a fine of US$ 50000 for every day of delay. On the other hand, the government's penalty was not specified in monetary terms. It was stated that, the government is to handover 30 per cent of the designated land to the contractor within six months of issue of the work order for construction. The balance 70 per cent of land has to be handed over at the rate of at least 35 per cent yearly; taking two and half years for handing over all the land earmarked for the expressway. However, there was no penalty specified for the delay in handing over the required land. Probably, the government's penalty will be the delay in completing the project, beyond the specified time in the work order. Given this easy way out, most probably the work will be delayed as the government will possibly fail to deliver the needed land as per schedule given the many stay orders and many court cases that have to be resolved before the needed land is acquired by the government for the proposed expressway. We will be lucky even if the time needed for acquiring and handing over the land by the government becomes double which comes to five years. Given this fact of life in Bangladesh, we will be lucky if the expressway is ready for use before the end of the year 2017. S A Mansoor Dhaka